ROCKINGHAM – It may not be baseball season yet, but that isn’t stopping the Richmond Senior High School baseball program from having a little Halloween fun.
Anyone driving past the Richmond baseball field along US Highway 1 Tuesday afternoon would have seen a hodgepodge of Halloween costume-clad baseball players competing in an inter-squad scrimmage. The spooky holiday themed scrimmage marked the final day of the Raiders’ fall workouts.
In its second year for head coach Ricky Young’s program, the seven-inning Halloween scrimmage saw Denson’s Donkeys defeat Till’s Turtles 5-1 in front of a sizable crowd. Senior pitchers Cameron Carraway (Till’s Turtles) and Hunter Parris (Denson’s Donkeys) acted as team captains for the squads named after Richmond head football coach Bryan Till and assistant baseball coach Brad Denson. Carraway and Parris drafted players from the varsity and junior varsity level earlier in the week.
Some of this year’s featured characters were two Tyrannosaurus Rex costumes (seniors Tyler Bass and Garret Richardson), a whoopie cushion (Carraway), “Ho Ho Hunter Parris” as Santa Claus, Weig the Builder (senior Garet Weigman), social media baseball comedians Donnie Baker (sophomore Hunter Hancock) and Domingo Ayala (senior Brett Young), Buddy the Elf (junior Dallas Cowick) and several other animals (a panda and a rooster), food items (bacon) and movie characters (Napoleon Dynamite).
“We started this last year when the state changed the way we can have workouts with an unlimited number of players participating,” Ricky Young said of the event. “It made it easier because we could have as many guys as we wanted, where before it could be eight-man workouts or an open field scenario where a coach couldn’t be involved.
“It’s a fun way to end our fall workouts,” he added. “The guys have been working hard the last six weeks. It’s Halloween and it’s just good to see them end everything with a little bit of fun. I really like all the costumes and thought the guys did a good job dressing out.”
Young acted as the game’s public address announcer, and allowed his players to platoon at different positions throughout the scrimmage to draw fall ball to a close. Seeing some time on the mound for both teams were Bass, Carraway, Parris, senior Johns Hopkins University commit Alex Anderson (dressed as Harry Potter) and freshman Matthew Walker.
On average this fall, Young has had anywhere between 30 and 34 players participate regularly in workouts, which he says is important in getting ready for the spring 2019 season. While the scrimmage was intended to end fall workouts with a tinge of comedy, it also provided Raider players with a full game’s worth of action.
“I think we had a really good fall,” Young commented. “Especially being able to mix the older guys with the younger guys. It’s a good opportunity for our younger players to be out here and be a part of the school program. A lot of them played for the (Richmond Rattlers) summer program, but this is their first taste of high school ball.
“We’ve worked on basic drills and some of the things we’ll use in the spring,” he continued. “It’s also big for the younger guys to be in practices and work alongside the veteran players and learn our terminology. The game is a little faster at this level and having so many guys here (consistently) helped with the team’s development.”
The Raiders will take some time off before reconvening in the winter months to begin for the regular season. Below are some photos of players in costume from Tuesday’s scrimmage.
Hunter Parris pitching as Santa Claus.
Cameron Carraway bats as a whoopie cushion.
Alex “Harry Potter” Anderson.
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